Posted on 04/26/2006 9:50:19 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
California's Republican governor and top Democratic lawmakers are talking tough, prompt action to battle climate change, yet unlike its pioneering restrictions on air pollutants, the state is taking more measured steps in regulating greenhouse gases. In fact, Sacramento could end up pushing Washington into action but lagging behind the federal government when it comes to curbing greenhouse emissions.
Last week, Democrats led by Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez and Assemblywoman Fran Pavley, D-Woodland Hills,filed legislation calling for mandatory reporting of greenhouse gas emissions by major emitters in January 2008 and a gradual capping of those emissions starting in 2012.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger publicly has backed freezing emissions in 2012, and state officials say it may take that long to design greenhouse-gas curbs across all major industries.
But the impetus for waiting until 2012 comes as much from electric utilities, refineries and other potentially affected industries.
Legislative aides say several of those industries are "comfortable" with a 2012 cap because the delay will afford time for Congress to pass nationwide limits and for a new president to sign them into law.
Several manufacturers, electrical utilities and corporate investors are betting on federal greenhouse gas limits starting sometime between 2009 and 2012. "The conventional wisdom is that, yes, the U.S. government will act sometime within the next several years," said Wendy Pulling, environmental director for Pacific Gas & Electric Co.
What is driving federal action is the mounting evidence of a human role in climate change, as well as regulation of greenhouse gases by Europe and Canada. But at least as powerful of a motivator is movement by eight Northeast states and California, among other Western states, to impose caps of their own.
"Any action taken on a regional or a state level we believe will create a policy patchwork that is more costly and less effective than a comprehensive national policy would be," said Elizabeth Bennett, Duke Energy spokeswoman, last week. "We feel very strongly that direct federal action is necessary."
For firms operating in multiple states, said PG&E's Pulling, "it's just a lot more cost effective operating by one set of rules."
State agitation for tougher laws routinely has sent industry to Capitol Hill seeking uniform, federal regulation to preempt the state rules.
Of the more than 100 climate-related bills before this Congress, half a dozen call for cuts in greenhouse gases at rates generally less aggressive that Schwarzenegger and Democratic lawmakers are talking about in California.
"You wouldn't want federal legislation that would all of a sudden force California to have a standard lower than it already has," said Nancy Skinner, executive director of The Climate Group, a Berkeley-based nonprofit promoting greenhouse-gas regulation on behalf of corporations and environmental agencies in several states.
Production of California's energy already generates less carbon emissions per person than any other state's, Skinner said, so "if you set the standard in the middle you could in effect make states like California dirtier."
When it comes to the environment, California generally has managed to impose tighter pollutant limits than the federal government, especially for air emissions.
David Doniger, climate policy chief for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the federal government valued having California test-drive both the new rules and the technologies needed to comply with them, such as the catalytic converter. "It was pioneered in California, and it's global now," he said. "That pattern is being repeated."
For those reasons, he and several other environmentalists argue that Congress won't interfere with California's greenhouse-gas regulations.
Yet Californians also could link ordinary air pollutants to urban smog and respiratory problems in children and the elderly. Greenhouse warming by contrast is global.
Whether California emissions are governed by more stringent state rules or looser federal ones could depend on how stark the difference is, but it is clear to Truman Semans, director for business strategy at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, that Californians consider a "very serious local issue."
"It's one of the reasons why California is moving," he said. "It does speak volumes to California's views on the importance of not letting the federal government pre-empt them."
Returning CA Senate and Assembly to a part-time legislature could reduce carbon dioxide emissions significantly. And save money.
How did it come to be that we are electing this group of psychotics to run the state?
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